Re: Mk 3.5 ~ Middle Voice

From: atombomb@sirius.com
Date: Thu Apr 15 1999 - 02:15:57 EDT


ONTWS EGERQH O KURIOS!!!

kai peribleyamenos autous met' orghs-- "and
for-his-part-having-looked-around-at them with anger"...

Doesn't the middle generally indicate action undertaken on one's own
behalf or on one's own part, with oneself as both subject and {object,
instrument, etc}?

I like George's way of putting it: "The active directs the action
outward, and the passive receives the action from without, and the
middle is simply the actor acting from within him/her self..." but
I've never gotten a sense that middles "afford us a window into just
what is going on *within*" their subjects. Or at least, that
formulation seems rather too psychological! It's just that the action
starts and and is complete in the same spot, which is the subject.

Because of that, rhetorically, it seems to me that the middle
participles in this passage have the effect of isolating Jesus--
rather as if "I looked for sympathy but found none", as it says in
another context. He looks around, but there's no connection.

John Burnett, m.a.

George Blaisdell wrote:
>
> >From: "Moon"
>
> >George,
> >thanks for your comments.
> >
> >You wrote:
> >> I had a hard time with it for a long
> >> time! Until I discovered its potential
> >>for being viewed as the
> >> "inner" voice of the verb.
> >>The active directs the action outward,
> >>and the passive receives the action from without,
> >>and the middle is simply
> >> the actor acting from within him/her self...
> >
> >Do you mean by it what Carl said about the middle voice,
> >"it describes self-projection or self-involving actions"?
>
> Yes, [although somewhat differently focused.] In this passage clearly
> so, because Jesus is taking an action [to heal the withered hand] and
> the two middle participles afford us a window into just what is going
> on *within* Jesus as He tells the man to hold out his hand. This is
> why I often like to see the middle as the 'inner' voice...
>
>
> George Blaisdell
> Roslyn, WA
>
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